Glossary

The terms the docs and the API use, defined once. The ones people mix up most: a team is your whole workspace, a profile is a folder inside it (one per customer if you're building a platform), and an account is a connected social account inside a profile.

10DLC

US carrier registration required before a US number can send SMS: a one-time brand registration plus a monthly campaign fee. One approved registration covers all your numbers. Other countries need no registration.

Account (connected account)

A social account (an Instagram profile, a Facebook Page, an X account…) that a user has authorized via the connect flow. Every account lives in exactly one profile and is identified by its accountId.

Account-day

The billing meter for connected accounts: one unit per account per day it stays connected. At month end, account-days are summed, divided by the days in the month, and run through the graduated price ladder. See How billing works.

accountId

The ID of a connected account. It's how most webhooks tell you who an event belongs to — keep an accountId → customer mapping if you serve multiple tenants. Compare profileId.

API key

Your bearer credential (Authorization: Bearer …). One key is enough for an entire integration — rate limits scale with your connected accounts, not your key count. See also scoped API key.

Connect flow

The OAuth handshake that turns a user's social login into a connected account: GET /v1/connect/{platform}?profileId=… returns an authUrl, the user authorizes there, and the account lands in that profile. Full walkthrough in Connecting accounts.

Content-hash dedup

The second layer of duplicate-post protection: the same (platform, accountId, content + media) fingerprint within 24 hours is rejected with 409 and the existingPostId. See Idempotency.

External post

A post published natively on the platform (in the Instagram app, for example) rather than through the API. A background sync picks external posts up roughly every 90 minutes per account; sync-external fetches one on demand.

Headless mode

A connect-flow variant (headless=true) where you build the page/organization/board selection UI yourself instead of using the Zernio-hosted screens — the fully white-label option. See standard vs headless.

Idempotency key (x-request-id)

A UUID header on POST /v1/posts marking a logical request. Retrying with the same UUID within ~5 minutes returns the original post (200 with existingPost) instead of double-posting. See Idempotency.

KYC

One-time identity verification required before provisioning phone numbers in regulated countries; review takes 1–3 business days. Unregulated countries provision instantly. See number availability.

MCP server

Zernio's Model Context Protocol server at mcp.zernio.com — lets AI agents (Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT) operate the API directly: post, read analytics, manage the inbox. See MCP setup.

Presigned upload

The media upload flow: POST /v1/media/presign returns an uploadUrl to PUT the file to and a publicUrl to reference in posts. Uploads sit in temporary storage for 7 days until a post using them publishes.

Platform

One of the 14 social networks the API publishes to (Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn…). Each has its own capabilities and settings — see Platforms.

Post

Content created through the API, targeting one or more platforms via its platforms array. Moves through statuses draft → scheduled → publishing → published / partial / failed — see the post lifecycle.

Profile

A container inside your team that groups connected accounts — the tenant boundary. Every new team starts with a "Default" profile; platforms create one profile per customer. Profile names are unique within a team. See Build a Platform.

profileId

The ID of a profile, and the tenant filter across the API: pass it to the connect flow, account listing, analytics, and inbox endpoints to scope a request to one profile. Compare accountId.

Queue

Recurring posting slots defined per profile. Create a post with queuedFromProfile and it lands on the profile's next free slot — the built-in way to drip-feed content per tenant. See Queue scheduling.

Scoped API key

An API key restricted to specific profiles (scope: "profiles" + profileIds), optionally read-only (permission: "read"). An access-control tool for tenant isolation — not a throughput tool. See scoped keys.

Secondary selection

The extra step some platforms need after OAuth: picking which Facebook Page, LinkedIn organization, Pinterest board, Google Business location, or Snapchat profile to connect. See connecting accounts.

Segment (SMS)

The SMS billing unit: one 160-character GSM-7 message part (153 each when a message spans parts; 70/67 for emoji and non-Latin scripts via UCS-2). Rates are per segment, per destination — see SMS rates.

Team

Your whole Zernio workspace: the billing owner plus every invited member. Rate limits and the connected-account count that drives billing are computed per team. Contains profiles, which contain accounts.

Tenant

Your customer, when you build on Zernio as infrastructure. Modeled as one profile per customer, with your database holding the customer ↔ profileId and accountId → customer mappings. The Build a Platform section is the playbook.

WABA (WhatsApp Business Account)

Your business's account with Meta, which a Zernio number connects to. Meta bills template delivery and its per-minute calling fee directly to the WABA's payment method — never through Zernio. See WhatsApp rates.

Webhook

An HTTPS endpoint you register (up to 10 per team) that receives events (post.published, message.received, account.connected…). Delivery is at-least-once — dedupe on the event id — and signed with X-Zernio-Signature. See the webhooks overview.